Bitstrips

What is Bitstrips?

Bitstrips for Schools is an online comic creating program. Teachers can create a private virtual classroom with a classroom code. Each student is added to the classroom and can set their own passwords. Teachers can create assignments for any subject at any level, for students to access and complete at home or school. (Students are able to create their own avatars to use in assignments). Once assigments are complete, students publish them and submitted to the teacher. Feedback comments can then be added (including a 'laugh' feature) to the strip for the student creator to view. Published strips can be downloaded, shared with others, embedded or printed. A variety of assignments (organized by grade and subject) can also be accessed and shared with other educators in Assignment Library. There is a free 30 day trial.

How Bitstrips Supports Learning

Bitstrips for Schools from Bitstrips on Vimeo.

• Visual for non-readers/writers
• Students are famliar with the visual language (avatars, comics)
• Bridges gap between what children like to do in leisure time and what they do at school
• Supports visual learner
• Assignments can be easily differentiated
• High interest medium
• Motivates and engages reluctant learners
• Encourages critical and creative thinking
• Students develop visual and media literacy skills
• Students can interact and collaborate with each other on assignments
• Individual feedback (comments, laughs) can be provided online to each student

How Can I Use Bitstrips in the Classroom?

• Social Skills-teach emotions,
• Language Arts-teach inferencing; sequencing; summarizing; digital storytelling
• Social Studies--create an avatar of a historical figure making a historical speech
• Science-create comic frames sequencing procedures of an experiment
• French--creat a conversational scene using French vocabulary
• Health -- create a public service announcement based on decision making unit of study
• Great for EAL students and students with Autism

Tips for Educators

• Monitor student activity (e.g. last login, progress on assignments) on teacher dashboard; set administration settings (class permissions)
• Inappropriate comics can be flagged by the teacher and deleted

Getting Started

• Sign up for free 30 day trial at Bitstrips for Schools
• Create a private virtual classroom with class code
• Add students to virtual classroom
• Check out Assignment Library; assign activities to students
• Do first assignment as a class
• Try creating own assignments

Sample Bitstrips

This comic was created by the FLS class to summarize steps and reflect on painting canvas leaves with Leah Dorion, the author of The Giving Tree.